Workshop 3First Computers

1. How to make reliable systems from unreliable parts?

2. What are algorithms?

Overview

Jacquard Loom

Charles Babbage’s analytical engine

Ada Lovelace’s programming the analytical engine

German Enigma Machine

Alan Turing at Bletchly Park – Cracking the code, built “the bombe”

Colossus – 1943 at Bletchly Park

Princeton AIS – Von Neumann & ENIAC

Mark 1 computer at Harvard

Philadelphia (Eckert & Mauchly) ENIAC => UNIVAC

Jacquard Loom

Fiber artist Lia Cook talks about her Jacquard loom (2 minutes) cache

1725 Basile Bouchon used a series of punched cards threaded together to give a sequence of weaving patterns.

1801 Joseph Marie Jacquard’s loom.The basic idea was the holes indicated where the needle should press through.

Pictures: From loom to computers

Charles Babbage’s analytical engine

Babbage was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University (Newton & Hawkings)

He cofounded the analytical society

In 1822 he started work on the difference engine, designed to compute mathematical tables

He later designed the analytical engine, a mechanical computer programmed by punch cards

Charles Babbage Analytical Engine (8 minutes) cache

The greatest machine that never was - John Graham-

Cumming (12 minutes) cache

Ada Lovelace 1815 - 52

Daughter of Lord Byron. From -----Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Canto 3

Her mother Annabella urged her to study mathematics to prevent Ada repeating her father’s madness

Ada met Babbage in 1833

Her notes on the analytical engine may be considered the first computer programs

She envisioned computers with applications beyond calculating mathematical functions

Portrait of Ada by British painter Margaret Sarah Carpenter (1836)

Information Pioneers: Ada Lovelace (5 minutes) cache

The child of love, -- though born in bitternessAnd nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sireThese were the elements

Science in Seconds - Ada Lovelace (2 minutes) cache

From mechanical to electronic computing

George Stibitz – Built the Complex Number Calculator at Bell Labs in 1939

Invention of the First Electrical Digital Computer Stibitz video (8 minutes)

Used mechanical relays

Not programmable

German Enigma Machine

invented by Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I

Used by German military, particularly U-Boats

1932 deciphered by 3 Polish cryptologists

Germans later enhanced it

Cracking the Enigma Code (10 minutes) cache

Bletchley Park – British cryptographers including Alan Turing managed to crack the code in part by building cryptonalytical Bombe machines

Alan Turing at Bletchly Park

Enigma encoding was changed daily

The Bletchly Park team had only 24 hours to try different code settings

Turing saw that certain patterns in the code could be used to prune the possible settings

Turing built “the bombe” (electro-mechanical computer) to automate trying settings 1940

Operating the Bombe: Jean Valentine's story (5 minutes) cache

Colossus 1943 Colossus (all electronic programmable computer)–

built 1943 at Bletchly Park by a team headed by Max Newman with Turing’s help

Purpose – Decrypt messages coded by the German Lorenz machine

Tommy Flowers EE led the design

After the war Churchill ordered Colossus machines and their blueprints destroyed

Due to its secrecy, Colossus did not have a major influence on the evolution of computing

A replica of Colossus Mark 2 was built in 2007

Colossus did not use stored programs; it was programmed using plugs, wires and switches.

Colossus: Creating a Giant(9 minutes) cache

Princeton IAS – Von Neumann & ENIAC

Von Neumann was a Hungarian mathematician, physicist and inventor

1930 Von Neumann came to Princeton as a guest lecturer

1933 he was appointed to the Institute of Advanced Studies joining Einstein and Oswald Veblen, and later on Kurt Gödel

Von Neumann was prominent in foundations of mathematics, physics, quantum mechanics, game theory, set theory, etc.

In WW2 Von Neumann joined the Manhattan project to develop the atomic bomb – Along with J. Robert Oppenheimer and Stanislaw Ulam

John Von Neumann Documentary (1 hour tribute) cache (24 mins)

John Von Neumann Interview (2 minutes) cache

Von Neumann architecture

First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC

by John von Neumann,Contract No. W-670-ORD-4926,

Between the United States Army Ordinance Department

and the University of Pennsylvania Moore School of Electrical Engineering

University of PennsylvaniaJune 30, 1945

• Stored program - Memory held program instructions as well as data

• Turing’s earlier universal machine stored the program (state transitions) on the tape

EDVAC text

… it is now possible to take up the five specific parts into which the device was seen to be subdivided, and to discuss them one by one. Such a discussion must bring out the features required for each one of these parts in itself, as well as in their relations to each other.

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer)

1943 United States Army, Ordnance Corps contracted Moore School at Univ. of Penn. to build a computer

John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert led the design

1946 ENIAC finally delivered

Used to predict behavior of the hydrogen bomb (Von Neumann) Left to Right: Unknown, J. Presper Eckert,

Dr. John Mauchly, Jean Jennings Bartik, Lt. Herman Goldstine, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum

1946 ENIAC - Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computing (1 minute) cache

MANIAC – Mathematical And Numerical Integrator And Computer

Princeton 1950

Eckert and Mauchly left the Moore School to form a commercial company. It later morphed into UNIVAC.

Von Neumann recruited some of the ENIAC team into a Princeton project.

MANIAC was built at Los Alamos in 1952

(There seems to be a lot of confusion between ENIAC and MANIAC @mw)

Von Neumann and Oppenheimer

WEIZAC: Israel's first computer(6 minutes) 3-3

Mark I 1944 Howard Aiken

Harvard physicist needed to solve systems of differential equations

Discovered parts of a Babbage engine in a Harvard attic

Designed Mark I computer inspired by Babbage

1939 Harvard contracted IBM to build it

1944 Mark I delivered

Mark II video: Early Innovators: Howard Aiken (4 minutes)

Grace Hopper

Ph.D. in math from Yale

Interested in precise use of language

Documented history and use of Mark 1

In wartime Mark I became a navy project. Howard Aiken is pictured in the center next to Grace Hopper.